However comfortable a waiting-room may be, it is not a comfortable place to spend the whole night. With hard steel chairs with immovable handles as beds and backpacks as pillows, the night seemed endless. We waited forever for the sun to rise, growing colder and colder as the night went by. At 5:30 in the morning, we finally decided we had had enough of the waiting-room, and we went for a walk.If we had thought the station was cold, outside was freezing. The small consolation was that everything was beautiful. We passed Mozart's house and admired delightful miniatures in shop windows. We saw bottles of all shapes and sizes displayed in some shop windows, and dolls arranged in others. We walked farther and farther, bringing life back to our freezing legs.And we got back at 9:25 for The Sound of Music tour.That was the most expensive thing we did. (What came a close second was the … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Salzburg
We hopped onto the 12:34 from Vienna to Salzburg, delighted as usual with our Eurail passes. At Salzburg station, though, we spent the most depressing time of all. I was 17; my sister was 19. We had spent a long time away from home already. We had little money and less experience. We had been making decision after decision for several days, and we were exhausted."No, there are absolutely no hostels available for tonight at Salzburg."Florence was fresh in our minds, and we did not want to repeat the horror of a night outdoors. "Maybe we should go to Munich. Let's leave out Salzburg altogether and just take a train out."We called the Munich hostels whose numbers we had, and they were available, but cost the earth."But what do we do? Should we do it anyway?" "What train should we take? Does it need a reservation?" "Where do we go? What do we do?" Frustration bordering on despair … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Vienna
I've already written so much about Vienna. The lady in the train, who warmed our hearts by taking us to the dining car and giving us tickets as if we were doing her a favour. Our crazy attempt to find the Burggarten. The Schmetterling Haus. Mozart and crisp apple strudel.Vienna was much more, though. We found our cheapest youth hostel there, at €15,50. We met dozens of wonderful Austrians; even in the middle of the night, people went out of the way to help us find our hostel. Our first hostel in Vienna gave us the most charming room we had seen thus far. We had a desk, lovely beds, and even an attached bathroom!Vienna welcomed us with 'bad' weather, which we loved. There was an incessant drizzle, which prevented us from taking photographs, but what's a little rain between young backpackers and a beautiful city?Awed by St. Stephen's cathedral (Stephansdom), we stood outside it for a … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Goodbye, Italy!
We tried to feel sentimental about leaving Italy, but could not find it in ourselves to do so. Italy was beautiful, but we were going to Austria - the land of Mozart and "The Sound of Music"! (Both came later, though, because we went to Vienna before Salzburg.)With our Eurail passes, we did not need to book trains everywhere we went, but the train-schedule we received with our passes was outdated. Our plans of taking a night-train to Paris from Amsterdam fell through because we discovered there was no night-train from Amsterdam to Paris. Even so, the Eurail pass was a boon. In Europe, with so few people travelling compared to in India, we did not need to reserve on most trains. Our passes served as tickets, so we just had to hop on and find unreserved seats. The unreserved seats, needless to say, are nothing like the horrifying general compartment we see here.We walked all over … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Venice
Venice was the place where we relaxed. When we got there, we were told at the information booth at the station that there was no way we would find cheap accommodation in Venice at the weekend. The best we would get was a place that cost €65 a night for three people. Okay, we said, okay. We'll be back. We went to our old faithful, the International Youth Hostel Federation (IYHF) map and found a phone number. The YH cost €17,50 per head and accommodation was available; so there.The line was unclear, but I heard clearly enough to get excited that we had to take boat number 82. Boat number! We were in Venice, the place with the Rialto and the Merchant!Thanks to the train strike, we had been dropped at Venezia Mestre instead of Venezia Centrale, so we had to take a bus before we could take a boat. Public transport is expensive in Venice, with no day passes or weekend passes. We paid €1,60 … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Still in Florence
We had nowhere except the station to spend the night, so we wanted to get there as late as we possibly could. We had dinner at a fancy Italian place instead of on the street: it took longer. After dinner, we walked slowly towards the bus stop and discovered that the next bus (which was the last bus) to the station was 45 minutes away. After the day's adventures, we were more than a little tired, so we made our way to the river and sat around for half an hour just looking at the city lights.We got back to the bus-stop well in time for our 22:35 bus. Except that it didn't come. We waited till 23:00 before approaching a girl waiting at the stop."Hello, do you speak English?" I asked. "No." "A little?" "No."I had to rethink my plan now."Bus?" I pronounced it the Italian way, and then realised what a stupid question that was because it amounted to Are you waiting for a bus at the … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Florence
We spent just a few hours in Florence, but they were truly splendid.As with every place we visited, it took us about 45 minutes to figure out where to go from the station and how. Finally, we bought tickets to Piazza Pitti, which had the most interesting-looking museums according to our map.The bus-ride gave us our first sight of Florence. It was charming, everything that I wanted it to be. Quaint bridges and picturesque houses ... What more does one need? Unfortunately, a lot more. Enough people find Florence charming for it to be rather expensive too, and we discovered that each museum had a separate entrance fee. After much deliberation, we decided to visit the royal apartments.I could have stayed there for much longer, gazing at the delicate chandeliers and beautiful sculpture. Those spectacular chandeliers (lit, admittedly with electric bulbs) are what I will always … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Pisa
Tempers were frayed on that journey to Pisa. What was the point of going to Pisa at all? Pisa was just a tourist gimmick, like the Brindavan Gardens in Mysore. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was the only thing to see; it could not be worth it. We would spend just a few hours there. I would rather go to Florence.Grumpy moods made us assume that the lady in the train compartment with us was also grumpy, so we avoided talking to her for quite a while. Finally, when it seemed that the bad temper in the air was tangible, we decided to take our minds off things and make conversation.Things looked up from there on. The lady, we discovered, was not grumpy at all; she was just self-conscious about her English. She told us how to get to the leaning tower, where we should get off, what buses she thought would take us there ... It was perfect!We bought 60-minute bus passes and hopped on to a … [Read more...]
Backpacking through Europe: Rome
We didn't visit the Colosseum. I get that confession out of the way right in the beginning. We saw the Colosseum from the outside, all lit up and magnificent at night, but we did not go there at all to visit the inside as tourists. And today, when I look back I don't know why.Rome was beautiful despite that. We bought a day pass for the city bus, valid until midnight, and just wandered all over the city seeing what there was to see. We walked everywhere we could, and when we grew tired, just hopped on to a bus and went wherever it took us, sight-seeing all the way. Looking at the buildings, just feasting our eyes on the city around us, filled our hearts and souls.The Sistine Chapel, we were told, was closed on the day we reached, but it would be open the next day. The guard at the gate warned us, "But closes at 3 o'clock and half!" "Three-thirty." "Yes, yes, I don't speak English so … [Read more...]
Bhigwan
My European travelogue has to wait; I went to Bhigwan yesterday.A journey of two hours brought us to Bhigwan, which has a lake that is roughly east-south-east of Pune. Flamingos, they say, come to Bhigwan, and stay there till the end of February.We left home at 5 in the morning, but by the time we got on to the boat at Bhigwan, the sun was well up in the sky, and we knew that we would see nothing. Birds, we know, come out only early in the morning, before it gets hot.How wrong we were! Flamingos, spoonbills, open-billed storks, bar-headed geese, cormorants, gulls, glossy ibises, black-headed ibises, terns, grey herons, egrets, kingfishers ... We saw them all. My eyes darted from one to another, noticing details of each bird because we saw so many of them. We saw enough birds up close, right there, flying above our boat. We heard their calls and saw them hovering over the … [Read more...]